Andy Burnham seems likely to pick up a second term as Greater Manchester mayor when voters go to the polls in May, following his widespread acclaim as ‘King of the North’ during lockdown. His team will be further reassured by the struggles of Nick Buckley, running as candidate for Reform UK, previously the Brexit Party.
Last summer Buckley caught national attention after he lost his charity job for publicly criticising the Black Lives Matter movement. The founder of Mancunian Way, which aims to help young people, reclaimed his role after some kerfuffle. But there’s one platform he’s not returned to.
Marchamont noticed that Buckley’s Patreon page has been taken down while the funding platform’s ‘trust and safety team’ conducts a review. It’s unclear what the cause is, but the community guidelines says that users “cannot use Patreon to fund your run for office or to fund the political campaigns of others.”
Over on PayPal, Buckley boasts that he “cancelled being cancelled”, but this appears not to be the case on Patreon. Hopefully his campaign is doing better than his crowdfunding efforts…
